Spoken Word

2 Apr 2023

Spoken Word: Episode 9: Ms Beige Brown Goes Beyond (MICF)

Arts, History, James WF Roberts, Joy Media, Joy94.9, Literature, News & Politics, Performing Arts, Philosophy, Sexuality, Society & Culture, Spoken Word, Visual Arts

LISTEN TO PODCAST NOW

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 54:40 — 125.1MB)

Subscribe or Follow Us: RSS

Spoken Word: Episode 9: Ms Beige Brown Goes Beyond (MICF)

This week on Spoken Word, on Joy94.9 we were joined by the hilarious and empowering performers Ms. Beige Brown (Cathy Hunt) and Shannon.

BEIGE BROWN (she/her) Lead Artist

Ms Beige Brown is Australia’s foremost feminist performance poet. She is (always already) returning to the stage after many years absence. Beige hid when the documentary about her poetic process Beige Brown: Wombless Without Words was released yet now thrusts herself out into a world often unrelentingly harsh to artists.

Beige has her own You Tube Channel, Beige Brown Poet where you can witness her poetic rebellion against monoliths of contemporary culture including Writers Festivals and the outmoded bastions of academia and publishing which continue the ongoing cultural project of making marginal anyone with mammaries (literal or conceptual) or whose excessive poetic words leak out beyond set borders.

Beige’s work is far too radical for most of Australia to understand. This is her tragedy. For Beige’s online oeuvre, see – Beige Brown Poet on YouTube.

CATHY HUNT (she/her) Co-Conspirator

Cathy Hunt has been performing as alter ego Beige Brown for decades. Beige has appeared at poetry events in Sydney, Canberra and Melbourne including fortyfive downstairs Spoken Word Circle, Get Bent, Bad! Slam! No! Biscuit!, Griffringe, Noted Writers Festival, Small & Loud, Convergence: MPavilion & Melbourne Variety Night.

Beige Brown began as a pub cabaret act, sparked by creative writing lecturers who insisted on inflicting their experimental works on their students. Beige Brown: Wombless Without Words is a short film exploring Beige’s return to poetry after writer’s block. It screened at film festivals including WOW World of Women Festival 2016; Blue Mountains film festival, Mudgee MUDFEST winning the Audience Choice Award, Newtown Film Festival.

SHANNON LOUGHNANE (they/them) Outside eye / co-conspirator

Shannon Loughnane is a live artist and theatre-maker, a graduate of VCA’s Postgraduate Diploma in Performance Creation (Animateuring). They are most interested in participatory and forum modes, forces of chaos, interruption, improvisation, live art, community engagement, play, tasks and stunts. Shannon works strongly through autobiographical enquiry and specialises in intimate experimental works, usually of a solo nature. They enjoy finding ways to create outside of the restraints of institutions, finances and expectations.

For Midsumma Festival they created a deeply personal show Hello! Hi! My Name is Shannon. Quick Question: How does an adult make new friends? Works include David & Jonathan and The One, an exploration of loss, co-created with Cathy Hunt and also (I’m Going to Die in This Bracket) about their relationship to money, nominated for Best Theatre Melbourne Fringe 2020.

Shannon’s work, I Was Depressed When I Titled This Show Sorry took on the ambitious task of curing depression in six weeks. Other performative leaps include re-enacting Anita Ekberg’s La Dolce Vita scene in a fountain, selling himself via pyramid scheme, inducting audiences into a fitness cult, transforming into a Stonewall-era drag queen for walks through Fitzroy, and building the Tower of Babel out of seven months’ rubbish.